Monthly Archives: July 2011

I’ve been woefully remiss in posting to this blog. In my defense, I’ve been pretty busy writing for clients, looking for new ones and dealing with some personal life issues such as buying a new house, moving into said house, and writing so I can pay for said house.

Did I mention I’ve been busy writing?

But I do realize that this blog is an important part of my writing career, so I will strive to post more often.

I can hear Yoda now. “Do or do not. There is no strive.”

OK — so he said “try,” but same difference.

Since my last post, I’ve lost one client, quit writing for another, gained two new ones and maintained the other three. Not bad considering my attentions have been divided between 1,234,435 other things.

That’s just a rough estimate, of course.

But this blog is important to me, so I figured that since I had a few minutes, I should post something.

And this is that something.

Aren’t you glad I stopped by? Yeah, me too.

OK — that’s all the time I have now. As you could probably tell, I don’t really have much to say writing-wise, cept what I’ve already said: I’m writing. A lot.

And I’m sure you’ll agree with me that, if ever there was a great excuse not to blog about writing, being too busy writing to blog about it should rank pretty high.

For those of you who know me from Facebook, you know that June was a roller-coaster month, career-wise. Landed my biggest gig ever — just to see it crash and burn because of a lack of communication. My laptop died, so I had to scramble to buy a new one — something I might not have done had it not been for the tight deadline for the new gig — that crashed and burned. Gave up a lower paying client because they refused to understand that sometimes other work might come first, so I would have more time to work on the new gig —

that crashed and burned.

Did I mention the new gig crashed and burned? LOL

I learned a valuable lesson, a lesson I have been preaching to other writers for *gasp* over a decade: Don’t rely too much on one client. It can come back to bite you.

Consider me bit..er..bitten…

Anyway, lesson learned.

Now, to be fair, I didn’t give up all my clients. I still have several others with whom a have a good working relationship. And also in the matter of fairness, the client I gave up was not only low-paying, but dare I say it — was also a pain in the keister. I’ll work for low wages if I enjoy the work and can do it quickly, but don’t act like you’re doing me a favor by letting me write for you and expect me to drop everything for you because you mismanaged your time.

The mistake I made can be summed up in three words:

Forsaking all others.

You can treat your clients like a partnership, but you can’t treat them like a marriage. As soon as you shift all focus to just one client, the others suffer and it’s the same as not having any other clients. That kind of focus is great for a marriage, but it’s lousy for business. And that was the mistake I made. I put all my other clients on the backburner, and now, instead of having one of my highest earning months ever, June has been one of my lowest.

Yes, lesson learned.

Now, onto the reason for the title of this post. I am declaring independence from my old thinking and old ways. I’m going to try and make money from my writing in other ways. Ways that will allow me to write what I want, in the voice I want to use. Snark included. In the coming days and weeks, I’ll post links to my new material as they become available. If you like my Facebook statuses and the comments I share on the links I provide, you will most likely enjoy my new writing venture. I’ll keep you posted.